


Sacred

by Vesperbat



Category: King of Fighters
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-06
Updated: 2018-09-06
Packaged: 2019-07-07 21:54:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,015
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15917007
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vesperbat/pseuds/Vesperbat
Summary: After defeating Orochi alongside Kyo and Chizuru, Iori wakes at the Kagura household. He doesn't understand Chizuru, and he doesn't understand Kyo. He hardly understands himself. There is one thing he does understand: the thing he won't surrender, not for anything in this world or the next.





	Sacred

**Author's Note:**

> Set directly after the Sacred Force Team's '97 ending in which Kyo, Wild Iori, and Chizuru seal Orochi together.

Iori stirred, eyes crinkling, though they adjusted quickly to the dimly lit space. Fatigue settled deep in his bones, and the weight of it nearly pinned him down. It was always like this, once he had wandered through the mindless fugue of rage and come out on the other side. His stores of adrenaline were exhausted, leaving him a spent heap of jelly on the ground.  


Or- no- not the ground. He blinked sleepily as a gradual awareness of warmth filtered into his brain. A blanket enveloped him, and the quiet scents of fresh linen and sweet tatami competed with the tang of iron in his mouth. This was new.

A rustle on the far side of the room drew his attention, and the face of Kagura Chizuru appeared beyond the sliding door. She smiled, relief smoothing her brow. “So you’re up,” she said, crossing the room and kneeling on the floor beside him. “Good.”

“Orochi,” he rasped, and he paused, swallowing against his dry throat. It didn’t do much good.

Chizuru nodded, solemn. “Thanks to Kyo and yourself, I was able to contain the threat. Orochi is sealed, for now.” She sighed. “I’d like to say for good, but I know better.”

Iori shot up, eyes widening. He barely registered the pain it caused him. “Kyo-”

“Is fine,” said Chizuru, placing a hand on his arm. The touch was both gentle and insistent, urging him down onto the futon. He resisted for a moment, just enough to make the point clear, before settling back. “He’s asleep in the next room over,” she said, once he had closed his eyes again. “He wasn’t unconscious after the fight, but he was pretty exhausted.”

Exhaustion was plain in Chizuru’s face as well. He wondered if she had stopped to rest at all. She never seemed to, always ready to drag him back in to some obnoxious mission of destiny. She might not have to deal with Orochi’s possession, but Iori did not envy her role in this heavenly drama. Hers was a life he could not imagine living.

Granted, she could run. She could abandon this life for a simpler one, far, far away, where Orochi could only torment her in her dreams. That wasn’t really true, though. Chizuru was a good person – a person with deep concern for the world and the duty she felt she owed it. The idea that she hadn’t done everything she could to fulfill that duty would burn at her no matter where she turned.

She was also a person who no longer had an elder sister, thanks to Orochi and the Hakkeshu, and he knew that burned at her as well. It always would.

“I’ll get you something to drink,” she continued. “Water, and then- tea? Coffee?”

Iori’s eyes cracked open. “We couldn’t fight,” he said, brow creasing.

Chizuru tilted her head. “What? No, you certainly fought. You may not remember, since you were under the influence of the Riot, but lucky for all of us-”

“Not together,” he hissed. “Kyo and I. We didn’t have the chance- that bastard.”

“Oh,” she said, smiling, as if he were a child whose misbehavior was so much more embarrassing for him than for those he inconvenienced with it. “You do have a one track mind, Yagami. Does ‘that bastard’ refer to Kyo or Orochi?”

“Both,” spat Iori. If she wanted to treat him like a spoiled child, he had no reason not to behave like one.

To his surprise, she laughed. “Of course. Kyo is a bit of a bastard, isn’t he? I think you two deserve each other. But just for now, rest.”

"Well, then. Are you sure it’s such a good idea having the spawn of the Yagami in the Kagura home?”  


“You bear the blood of the Yasakani. That much is true,” she said, voice soft. “But that’s why it’s important. That’s why you should be here.”

“Hmph,” he said. “My name isn’t Yasakani. I’ll stay here as long as I want, and not a moment longer.”

Chizuro nodded, rising. “I’ll go get that drink.” But she didn’t go. She watched him, fingers worrying at the hem of her sleeve. He kept his gaze stubbornly above her head, lingering on the designs carved into the wood panels beneath the ceiling.

“He’s a bit of a bastard, but he is a good person. So are you, Yagami. Somewhere in there.” She left then, and he rolled over, wincing at the sharp pain in his left arm. A good person – Chizuru must be dreaming.

This was all a strange dream. He still wasn’t sure why he had gone with them at all. He wasn’t anything like them. As Chizuru herself said, it was only pure, dumb luck that he turned on Orochi in the first place. Even if he had acted on instinct, some deep and primal need at the core of his soul, it only proved that his hate for Orochi was stronger than his hate for the two of them combined. He wasn't a good person. He was just a very angry one.

He turned again, gingerly, and shifted weight away from his aching arm. With the pain lifting, his mood began to lift as well. This had been an aggravation from start to finish, but the outcome wasn’t so bad. Even if Iori hadn’t been here, Kyo would have been. If it had only been the two of them, Kyo might not have been able to hold Orochi back.

Iori didn’t like to entertain the idea of his rival being so feeble as to fall to someone else, but Orochi was strong. Iori had to admit that. If he wasn't, they wouldn't have this problem at all. If Orochi deprived him of the one thing that belonged to him – him, and no one else – Iori shuddered.

Kyo’s fate belonged to him. Their fates belonged to each other. Iori would fight every demon in hell, every monster in the world, and every last god in heaven or on earth, because that was more sacred than they would ever be.


End file.
